the experiment of dropping two different weights; if he had, he would have written something very different. Yet he was believed because he wrote so confidently, and because people had a great respect for him in other ways, and perhaps most of all because we are taught in childhood to believe what we are told. The boy who likes to try things for himself is regarded as a troublesome and naughty boy, and is apt to get a whipping, even if he does not get burnt or poisoned. Yet the world has good reason to be very thankful to some of these naughty boys who have persisted in trying things for themselves.
Galileo was one such, and came in for punishment at the time: here on the screen you see a copy of a fine picture in the gallery at Cologne showing his punishment in prison. His troubles began when he first questioned this statement of Aristotle that a ten-pound weight would fall ten times as quickly as a one-pound weight, and by his trying the experiment for himself he first threw some light on this problem of gravity—the force which prevents our getting away from the Earth. Galileo was born at Pisa, a little town in the north of Italy, famous for its leaning tower. He went to school at Florence, not far away; and was determined to become a professor of mathematics. Several times he seemed to have a good chance of such a position, and was disappointed; but ultimately, to his great delight, he was elected Professor at his native city of Pisa, and he made use of the leaning tower to try his famous experiment with a ten-pound weight and a one-pound weight. In the presence of many witnesses, who
